00 = Firm no 01 = Probably not 10 = Probably yes 11 = Firm yes
Four fundamental states provides no computational benefit over two fundamental states. Any finite number of states can be simulated with two states; like I said, the only potential benefit is greater density. This is, in fact, why quantum computing is so interesting - there's no real way to map a qbit onto any number of deterministic bits.
And while conventional computers are typically built using two-state (0, 1) transistors, the molecular layer is built using a hexagonal molecule, and can switch among four conducting states -- 0, 1, 2 and 3, suggesting it may ultimately have more AI potential than quantum computing."
Goddamnit, that is not how it works. Even if each molecule has four different states, you can easily map them onto a small, finite number of bits - you just represent each molecule with two bits in a computer, and there's your equivalency. You don't get anything out of more states per unit except higher density. Seriously, TFA doesn't make this mistake; why did you have to add some useless speculation to a perfectly reasonable article?
If God actually cared about what we do with sperm, He would have woven those rules into the very fabric of reality like He did with the speed of light and the Laws of Thermodynamics.
Yeah, if you want to see how that thing could actually work, look at the Tempts Fate segment of the Goblins comic (currently on hiatus).
Here's how it goes: At the beginning of the month, the author posts an initial setting comic; at the bottom of the comic are several obstacles that Tempts Fate (the main character) will have to pass. Each obstacle is associated with a donation goal.
When the date of the obstacle rolls around, Tempts Fate will only defeat the obstacle if the goal has been met. How easily Tempts Fate defeats the obstacle depends on how much money over the goal the author has received.
If the donation goal hasn't been met, Tempts Fate will die.
The author initially started this several years ago, probably expecting that Tempts Fate would die in a couple of issues. Right now it's paused because the author has other stuff going on, but so far Tempts Fate has been no less than a little Goblin ninja; the donation goals are almost always exceeded, and sometimes by quite a lot.
That's because you don't live in a country with third-world internet capabilities! Come on over to the United States, with our revolutionary 3G connectivity - it shows up in official carrier maps and commercials, but not in reality! - and you'll see just how bullshit a bundled 3G connector can be!
How can you distinguish between "the culture in climatology prevents people from publishing evidence against AGW" and "the majority of data is consistent with AGW"?
Oh right, because if anyone had actual evidence against AGW they would publish it. The idea that science is somehow cliquish to the point of quashing dissenting data is weird and I have seen no evidence for it. Yes, scientists will try to keep poorly-written papers from being published - it's a matter of pride at that point, because if your field gets flooded with shit its reputation will go down the drain. Hell, the journals go out of their way to publish dissenting data - just imagine the prestige of being the one journal that published the truth about AGW.
The problem is that no such data can be found in reality, and believe me people are trying.
Not exactly. It just hides ads, it doesn't prevent them from getting downloaded. Since those stupid overloaded ad servers that slow down page loads are like 50% of what I hate about ads, it's not quite as useful.
So scientists who challenge the prevailing politically-correct liberal thesis are "climate deniers" - this is the basic problem. Even the term is ridiculous. Compare it to "holocaust denier".
Cite one. Please, I beg you. Cite one scientist with a reasonable publication record who "challenge[s] the prevailing politically-correct liberal thesis". Don't just leave statements like this hanging there in the breeze - this is the Internet, and with a quick copy, paste and a href= you too can create a link to support your claim!
I bet you that whoever you cite has either a terrible publication record or almost no background in anything like climatology. If they have both of those, then I bet that their "challenges" are nothing of the sort - they probably disagree on the magnitude of global warming, not the fact of it.
What money? Do you know how much funding your average climatology research unit gets? I bet you it's nowhere near BP or Exxon Mobile's profit margin this year. Hell, even Al Gore's much reviled investments into carbon offset companies don't amount to much more than a minuscule portion of that, and we're not talking about Al Gore here - we're talking about academics doing research.
Seriously, this is saying "Hey look, those guys get a drop of water! Don't pay any attention to our swimming pool!"
The guy who created the hockey stick brouhaha certainly did keep the data "in the dark", in that he did not release it to other scientists.
You want some AGW data? Here's an aggregate of a bunch of different universities' measurements. I look forward to your analysis of it.
Oh, do you want Michael Mann's (the hockey stick guy) data specifically? Here's the data behind one of his most recent papers. Note that he's included his Matlab code.
The whole "show us the data" thing was kind of an issue before, but now there's just no excuse. I bet you still don't know what to do with it, even now that you have it. I sure don't.
The PS2 also did what Sony wanted the PS3 to do - it rode the wave of a new movie format. Why buy a DVD player that can only play DVDs, when for only a little bit more (at the time) you could get a PS2 that would play DVDs (and DVDs were amazing compared to video tape), play PS1 games, and play PS2 games?
The Wii is only good for playing Wii games, so the potential market is smaller.
Sells acceptably well? Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if sales of the Wii are declining because everyone has one. I know I would have bought one ages ago if I could figure out how to make it work with one of my computers.
Look - almost one in ten people in Japan own a Wii. One in thirty people in the Americas own one, and this is including South American countries that don't have nearly as much wealth as the United States. I would argue that everyone who wants a Wii has one at this point, and that's why sales are dropping off - not due to lack of interest so much as a lack of people to sell to.
Now Nintendo has basically two options; either drop the price even further, which will probably not do all that much because $200 is an entirely reasonable price point, or ramp up their cloning efforts and create more people to buy Wiis.
Hey man, if you build a machine that reliably tell the difference between "right now, the subject thinks this is true" and "this is true", nobody will ever question you again - because you'll have basically constructed a universal oracle that can answer any question. You just have to find someone who believes all things are true.
Absolutely no lie detector will ever be able to tell the difference between "this is true" and "at this moment, the suspect believes that this is true". With some mental training (or, you know, schizophrenia) it's entirely possible to temporarily convince yourself that the sky is purple, and there's basically no way any machine will be able to pick up on it in the foreseeable future.
No judgment should ever rely on "the machine says he thinks its true, therefore he is guilty" - no matter how accurate the machine is.
You'd also need to figure out how to dispose of your rock tailings in such a way that they don't produce a giant abrasive cloud around the asteroid you want to work on, which would almost certainly screw up both incoming vehicles and your solar collectors and other equipment.
You could, maybe, pack them into a compact ball, and shoot them back at Earth? And then we'd pay you? You'd just have to make a point of only landing on sufficiently mineral rich asteroids.
No he wouldn't, because Juniper is still not Microsoft. He just wanted an excuse to go with MSFT. Nowadays, his business excuse would still be that he's never heard of "Juniper", and doesn't trust them to be able to give support because they've got a stupid name. I mean, who names their company after a tree?
(I hope you realise that most of your post consists of the well known strawman fallacy)
Oh good, so if I was setting up strawmen, then you aren't claiming that Mann et al 2008 used tree ring data improperly? Because that's the only position I attributed to you, as far as I can see. It would explain why you never supported that position; you never held it in the first place, you just insinuated that it was true.
Baillie, and many other dendrologists, are very wary about using tree rings as temperature proxies. I.e, your claim that Baillie's comment is about Keenan specifically is not correct, it's about oaks - no matter who uses them. (Climate signal in tree-ring chronologies in a temperate climate: A multi-species approach. Suarez, Butler, Baillie, 2009)
Did you even read the paper you're citing here? Did you even read the abstract? For those of you with access to it, here's a link to a pdf of the actual paper (it might be public access, I don't know).
Here's a quote from the abstract:
We nd that the moisture-related parameters, rainfall and the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), and to a lesser extent, maximum and mean temperatures, can be reconstructed.
Then look on page ten. There's a heading. It's "Reconstructions". In that part of the paper, Suarez et al (and in this case, et al includes Baillie) proceed to reconstruct temperature data using tree ring data. So apparently, Baillie's statement is about oaks, no matter who uses them - including the Baillie himself. Indeed, the point of this paper is that by using multiple tree species you can extract okay data from just the dendrochronological record. Keep in mind that Mann et al weren't doing that - they were using the dendro record plus other proxies. This paper is about how far you can get with just dendro and some calibration.
As a side note, I would be wary of citing the Wegman report; the social networking segment, at least, is full of outright plagiarism which is kind of concerning.
Anyway, now that I look at Mann et al 2008(warning, pdf and also you might not have access to it), it doesn't matter if the bristlecone data isn't that great. Here's a quote from the paper:
For both methods, we perform reconstructions both with and without dendroclimatic proxies to address any potential sensitivity of our conclusions to issues that have been raised with regard to the reliability of tree-ring data on multicentury timescales(4,11,16,19,33,34).
And guess what? It doesn't really make much of a difference. Here's (pdf again) a graph of the various reconstructions both with and without tree ring data; the no tree lines spike a bit more, but are generally consistent.
Funny how the website you linked to never even mentions this fact. Weird, huh? It's almost like they (and you) didn't read the actual paper.
Oh yeah and if you're wondering how they know that Mann et al has exactly 119 oak tree records in their reconstruction, it's because the stuff is available online. There's a link in the paper.
Indeed! And fortunately for us, many scientists are in fact socialists (or are funded with a sufficiently open mandate), and make their data freely available. You can find a collection of freely available data sources here.
Yes, it's not every single last bit of data that's been collected; however, the vast majority of all climate data is easily accessed by the public.
Slashdot Mirror
Four states good, two states better!
That schema is entirely equivalent to:
00 = Firm no
01 = Probably not
10 = Probably yes
11 = Firm yes
Four fundamental states provides no computational benefit over two fundamental states. Any finite number of states can be simulated with two states; like I said, the only potential benefit is greater density. This is, in fact, why quantum computing is so interesting - there's no real way to map a qbit onto any number of deterministic bits.
There may be some computationally useful side-effects of these chemical reactions (that's basically what was going on with that would calculate an FFT), or they may all happen at once and thus be massively parallel, but I was not addressing that; I was explicitly referring to the submitter's braindead insistence that four states was somehow better than two states.
Goddamnit, that is not how it works. Even if each molecule has four different states, you can easily map them onto a small, finite number of bits - you just represent each molecule with two bits in a computer, and there's your equivalency. You don't get anything out of more states per unit except higher density. Seriously, TFA doesn't make this mistake; why did you have to add some useless speculation to a perfectly reasonable article?
If God actually cared about what we do with sperm, He would have woven those rules into the very fabric of reality like He did with the speed of light and the Laws of Thermodynamics.
Only because they have far more effective methods of castrating you.
Yeah, if you want to see how that thing could actually work, look at the Tempts Fate segment of the Goblins comic (currently on hiatus).
Here's how it goes: At the beginning of the month, the author posts an initial setting comic; at the bottom of the comic are several obstacles that Tempts Fate (the main character) will have to pass. Each obstacle is associated with a donation goal.
When the date of the obstacle rolls around, Tempts Fate will only defeat the obstacle if the goal has been met. How easily Tempts Fate defeats the obstacle depends on how much money over the goal the author has received.
If the donation goal hasn't been met, Tempts Fate will die.
The author initially started this several years ago, probably expecting that Tempts Fate would die in a couple of issues. Right now it's paused because the author has other stuff going on, but so far Tempts Fate has been no less than a little Goblin ninja; the donation goals are almost always exceeded, and sometimes by quite a lot.
-1 wooosh
The subject's changed, so you have to change how you finish it. Duh.
... you finish your subject in the comment body
Gasp! So you mean she keeps her mouth shut and lets her work speak for itself? She's already more qualified than 80% of all politicians.
Or do you expect everyone to blare on about how they're "for real America"?
That's because you don't live in a country with third-world internet capabilities! Come on over to the United States, with our revolutionary 3G connectivity - it shows up in official carrier maps and commercials, but not in reality! - and you'll see just how bullshit a bundled 3G connector can be!
How can you distinguish between "the culture in climatology prevents people from publishing evidence against AGW" and "the majority of data is consistent with AGW"?
Oh right, because if anyone had actual evidence against AGW they would publish it. The idea that science is somehow cliquish to the point of quashing dissenting data is weird and I have seen no evidence for it. Yes, scientists will try to keep poorly-written papers from being published - it's a matter of pride at that point, because if your field gets flooded with shit its reputation will go down the drain. Hell, the journals go out of their way to publish dissenting data - just imagine the prestige of being the one journal that published the truth about AGW.
The problem is that no such data can be found in reality, and believe me people are trying.
Not exactly. It just hides ads, it doesn't prevent them from getting downloaded. Since those stupid overloaded ad servers that slow down page loads are like 50% of what I hate about ads, it's not quite as useful.
Cite one. Please, I beg you. Cite one scientist with a reasonable publication record who "challenge[s] the prevailing politically-correct liberal thesis". Don't just leave statements like this hanging there in the breeze - this is the Internet, and with a quick copy, paste and a href= you too can create a link to support your claim!
I bet you that whoever you cite has either a terrible publication record or almost no background in anything like climatology. If they have both of those, then I bet that their "challenges" are nothing of the sort - they probably disagree on the magnitude of global warming, not the fact of it.
What money? Do you know how much funding your average climatology research unit gets? I bet you it's nowhere near BP or Exxon Mobile's profit margin this year. Hell, even Al Gore's much reviled investments into carbon offset companies don't amount to much more than a minuscule portion of that, and we're not talking about Al Gore here - we're talking about academics doing research.
Seriously, this is saying "Hey look, those guys get a drop of water! Don't pay any attention to our swimming pool!"
Is what I meant to say. Clearly there's a conspiracy to keep this data from your oh so capable hands!
You want some AGW data? Here's an aggregate of a bunch of different universities' measurements. I look forward to your analysis of it.
Oh, do you want Michael Mann's (the hockey stick guy) data specifically? Here's the data behind one of his most recent papers. Note that he's included his Matlab code.
The whole "show us the data" thing was kind of an issue before, but now there's just no excuse. I bet you still don't know what to do with it, even now that you have it. I sure don't.
The PS2 also did what Sony wanted the PS3 to do - it rode the wave of a new movie format. Why buy a DVD player that can only play DVDs, when for only a little bit more (at the time) you could get a PS2 that would play DVDs (and DVDs were amazing compared to video tape), play PS1 games, and play PS2 games?
The Wii is only good for playing Wii games, so the potential market is smaller.
Sells acceptably well? Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if sales of the Wii are declining because everyone has one. I know I would have bought one ages ago if I could figure out how to make it work with one of my computers.
Look - almost one in ten people in Japan own a Wii. One in thirty people in the Americas own one, and this is including South American countries that don't have nearly as much wealth as the United States. I would argue that everyone who wants a Wii has one at this point, and that's why sales are dropping off - not due to lack of interest so much as a lack of people to sell to.
Now Nintendo has basically two options; either drop the price even further, which will probably not do all that much because $200 is an entirely reasonable price point, or ramp up their cloning efforts and create more people to buy Wiis.
Hey man, if you build a machine that reliably tell the difference between "right now, the subject thinks this is true" and "this is true", nobody will ever question you again - because you'll have basically constructed a universal oracle that can answer any question. You just have to find someone who believes all things are true.
Yeah, but localhost is CXXVII...I
And that just makes you look indecisive.
Absolutely no lie detector will ever be able to tell the difference between "this is true" and "at this moment, the suspect believes that this is true". With some mental training (or, you know, schizophrenia) it's entirely possible to temporarily convince yourself that the sky is purple, and there's basically no way any machine will be able to pick up on it in the foreseeable future.
No judgment should ever rely on "the machine says he thinks its true, therefore he is guilty" - no matter how accurate the machine is.
You could, maybe, pack them into a compact ball, and shoot them back at Earth? And then we'd pay you? You'd just have to make a point of only landing on sufficiently mineral rich asteroids.
No he wouldn't, because Juniper is still not Microsoft. He just wanted an excuse to go with MSFT. Nowadays, his business excuse would still be that he's never heard of "Juniper", and doesn't trust them to be able to give support because they've got a stupid name. I mean, who names their company after a tree?
Oh good, so if I was setting up strawmen, then you aren't claiming that Mann et al 2008 used tree ring data improperly? Because that's the only position I attributed to you, as far as I can see. It would explain why you never supported that position; you never held it in the first place, you just insinuated that it was true.
Did you even read the paper you're citing here? Did you even read the abstract? For those of you with access to it, here's a link to a pdf of the actual paper (it might be public access, I don't know).
Here's a quote from the abstract:
Then look on page ten. There's a heading. It's "Reconstructions". In that part of the paper, Suarez et al (and in this case, et al includes Baillie) proceed to reconstruct temperature data using tree ring data. So apparently, Baillie's statement is about oaks, no matter who uses them - including the Baillie himself. Indeed, the point of this paper is that by using multiple tree species you can extract okay data from just the dendrochronological record. Keep in mind that Mann et al weren't doing that - they were using the dendro record plus other proxies. This paper is about how far you can get with just dendro and some calibration.
As a side note, I would be wary of citing the Wegman report; the social networking segment, at least, is full of outright plagiarism which is kind of concerning.
Anyway, now that I look at Mann et al 2008(warning, pdf and also you might not have access to it), it doesn't matter if the bristlecone data isn't that great. Here's a quote from the paper:
And guess what? It doesn't really make much of a difference. Here's (pdf again) a graph of the various reconstructions both with and without tree ring data; the no tree lines spike a bit more, but are generally consistent.
Funny how the website you linked to never even mentions this fact. Weird, huh? It's almost like they (and you) didn't read the actual paper.
Oh yeah and if you're wondering how they know that Mann et al has exactly 119 oak tree records in their reconstruction, it's because the stuff is available online. There's a link in the paper.
Indeed! And fortunately for us, many scientists are in fact socialists (or are funded with a sufficiently open mandate), and make their data freely available. You can find a collection of freely available data sources here.
Yes, it's not every single last bit of data that's been collected; however, the vast majority of all climate data is easily accessed by the public.